Catholic priest sues Gov. Newsom over ‘endless’ shutdown

A Catholic priest who oversees several mission churches in Southern California, including St. Michael’s in Bakersfield, has named Gov. Newsom and the heads of several government agencies in

Kern, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Los Angeles counties in his lawsuit.

Father Trevor Burfitt is being represented in the suit filed at Kern Superior Court by the Thomas More Society, a law firm that describes itself as being “dedicated to restoring respect in law for life, family, and religious liberty.”

Burfitt is a member of the Society of St. Piux X, a society of priests which continues to celebrate the traditional Latin Mass and sacraments. According to the suit, he is the Prior of three other mission churches: Saint Joseph and the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Colton, Saint John Bosco Mission in San Diego and Mission Maria Mare Stella in Los Angeles. Altogether he supervises 1,000 in Southern California, and the suit says coronavirus restrictions have harmed his flock.

The suit claims that the concept of six feet of social distance, face coverings, a ban on indoor worship and remote worship are an anathema to the concept of Catholic worship.

“The Catholic Mass is ordered to the temple, not the outdoors,” the suit says. “A Catholic church is focused entirely upon the Holy Sanctuary where Christ in the Blessed Sacrament resides in the Tabernacle. Neither the Tabernacle nor the Catholic Mass belongs in a parking lot or other outdoor location, which lend themselves to the desacralization of the sacred mysteries and profanation of the Blessed Sacrament.”

The suit says the mission in Bakersfield is “essentially rendered defunct” after the ban on indoor worship, because it lacked outdoor space and high summer temperatures made worship “impractical.”

“It is now beyond reasonable dispute that, absent judicial intervention, Governor Newsom intends to continue indefinitely a massive and baseless suspension of the constitutional rights of Father Burfitt and nearly 40 million other residents of the state of California,” said Thomas More Society Special Counsel Paul Jonna in a news release.